Scenes from the life of a racing greyhound.

I show up unannounced on a Sunday morning at the massive, gated
compound called the Florida Kennels, which includes Tru-Paws. The
70-acre plot consists of about 50 buildings able to house 50 to 100
dogs each (there are around 2,000 dogs total), a full-sized practice
track, and several fenced sprinting runs.

All the dogs running at Flagler Dog Track and Entertainment Center
or Mardi Gras are kept here. Outsiders — especially reporters
— are not welcome on the compound, but Trudden gets me past the
security guards at the gate.

Trudden is just finishing preparation of the dogs' food. He starts
with 75 pounds of raw meat, which comes in giant blocks labeled: NOT
FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. Trudden adds the contents of a tall, industrial
pot that's been simmering on the small stove at the front of his
building. It's got chicken broth, some carrots, a few different kinds
of pasta, and rice. He mixes it all together with his bare hands.

C. Stiles

Greyhounds race from 18 months old until they're 4 or 5. After that, the industry no longer needs them.

Michelle Weaver likes to deliver all the adopted greyhounds herself.

To the food concoction, he adds a few small scoops of powdered
Gatorade "to build their electrolytes." He scoops the mixture into
silver bowls and weighs them. Then he adds a large scoop of a standard
grain dog food. Before he hands out the bowls to the dogs in their
crates, he squirts some with pancake syrup, "in case they have low
glucose." He has a bottle of Tums handy in case he suspects one of the
dogs has a bellyache.

"There's nobody who loves these dogs more than we do," he tells me.
"I feel like I have 60 pets."

Trudden asks me how often I've taken my dog to the vet since I've
had her.

Once.

"Well, these dogs each see a vet twice a week." He points out: "It
behooves us to take good care of the dogs. If they're not in good
shape, they're not going to win."

In the back of Trudden's kennel, the Rolling Stones play from a
stereo to 62 dogs in individual crates stacked two high along both
walls; each standardized crate measures 26 inches wide by 30 inches
high and is 42 inches deep. The females are on top. "They jump better,"
Trudden says. Females receive hormones so they can race with males
without fear of "accidental breeding." The dogs all look healthy. Most
wag their tails when they see us. The few I look at closely have good
teeth and soft fur. Trudden knows each dog by name and kisses some of
the females' heads, calling each "mama."

There's a large industrial scale — each dog must weigh within
one pound of what it weighed in the previous race, per track rules
— and near the front door is a chart detailing each dog's racing
schedule and special needs. On the walls are photos of Trudden and his
family with past champions.

Trudden was introduced to greyhounds by his grandpa Joe, who played
the dogs every day. He fondly remembers studying the program together
every afternoon and waiting anxiously to learn whether the dogs they
picked had won. When his grandfather died, Trudden scraped together
$1,200, bought a dog, and named it Joe's Unicorn. The dog won early and
often, and by the early '90s, Trudden was able quit his job at the
telephone company to become a full-time trainer. Not long after that,
he bought his own kennel.

One of the dogs he trained was BB's Story Book. I ask him about the
incident with the lure.

"I was here that night," he says. "It's one of the worst things I've
ever seen. I scooped him up with my own arms." His voice gets softer
and his eyes become glassy as he describes speeding to the animal
hospital. He kicks a rock. "There's nothing they could do," he says.
BB's Story Book was euthanized.

As Trudden works, he defends his beloved industry. He says he has
never had a healthy dog euthanized and has even kept dogs in his kennel
for more than a year — at an average cost of $5 per day —
before a spot in an adoption kennel opened up. Trudden estimates that
the industry employs 20,000 people in Florida alone. "That's not
counting the people who sell the trucks and the tires and the gas and
the food."

Still, Trudden acknowledges that public opinion has swayed and that
the end of dog racing is inevitable. "I just hope it's not in my
lifetime," he says.

We walk out back to the two fenced runs where the dogs are "turned
out" at least twice a day. Alongside the kennel is a small, metal
whirlpool for the dogs, on the day after they race. It's a greyhound
Jacuzzi. After the "hydrotherapy," he says, each dog gets a hand
massage.

Trudden turns to me: "Do these dogs look abused?"

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Joe Trudden might be a conscientious guy — but not
every trainer is. In December 2007, state investigators from the
Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of
Pari-Mutuel Wagering — the state agency overseeing greyhound
racing in Florida — discovered a gruesome scene. In building
four, just a few hundred yards from Trudden's kennel, 74 dogs were left
in dirty cages with almost no food or medicine for months.